Post-theology humor

Here, courtesy of alert readers Grania and Andrew, are two bits of apposite humor. The first is from the British humor magazine Private Eye (this is the totality of the piece; it wasn’t continued inside):

The 83 incidents uncovered in the past decade only scratch the surface of a hidden crime, according to Detective Superintendent Terry Sharpe, head of the child abuse investigation command at Scotland Yard.

An average of eight children a year in Greater London are victims of abuse based on witchcraft-style exorcisms, but this only reflects cases resulting in police investigations.

Sharpe detailed the horrific abuse, including being beaten or forced to drink unknown liquids, starved or deprived of sleep, blindfolded and having their hair shaved off.

Kristy Bamu was subjected to many methods of torture. It began with a simple accident when Kristy, waking in an unfamiliar bed, wet himself. Bikubi, finding the underwear, accused the boy of being possessed by kindoki – the word for witchcraft in the Congolese Lingala language. This is a recognisable trigger in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where both Bikubi and Bamu were born, according to Dr Richard Hoskins, an expert in African religions.

“The trigger that needs to occur for people to think someone is possessed by kindoki can be anything out of the ordinary. Bed-wetting is a classic example of this,” he told the Old Bailey trial.

For the next four days, Kristy and two of his sisters – Kelly, 21, and an 11-year-old – were accused repeatedly of being witches. They were forced to fast and stay up all night chanting prayers. In horrific evidence, which reduced members of the jury to tears, the court heard that Bikubi soon fixated on Kristy. Over several days, he beat him around the body with a metal bar used for weights, shoving the end of it into his mouth and dislodging a tooth. The football coach headbutted and hit the teenager, smashing bottles and then heavy floor tiles – bought to redecorate the flat – over his head. When paramedics arrived at the flat on Christmas Day and found the child drowned by the side of a bath, they found his blood all over the flat and an “armoury” of weapons that had been used to torture him.

Witchcraft had preoccupied Bikubi from an early age. Speaking to a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Tim Rogers, in Pentonville prison, he explained as a child in the DRC he saw rats and other “abnormal visions” and was isolated as a result. Bikubi – who moved to London when he was seven – believed he was “the chosen one”, with a special ability to sense other people’s spirits.

Thomas Bikebi, executive director of the Congolese Family Centre, said that for some believers once the presence of evil spirits had been “confirmed” – often, but not always by a pastor – the “punishment” was seen to be imposed on the spirit and not on the child. “When you force the child to fast, people believe you are starving the spirit, not the child. When you beat, you are beating the spirit,” he said.

How good that established Christian churches have never known witchcraft, evil spirits, the practice of exorcism…

Actually, given that this case was top of the news headlines in the UK last night, and that I was pointing out to the wife (a soft-core non-believer) that this – the witchcraft and beatings – is just an extension of standard religious thinking, I don’t think that the report is entirely inappropriate.
I look forward to seeing what Private Eye make of the witchcraft case. They’re not known for pulling their punches.
(Incidentally, “(Cont.p.94)” is a Private Eye-ism poking fun at the proliferation of multi-section, huge length newspapers. The newspaper equivalent of “57 Channels and nothing on”, which is hardly a celebration of multi-channel TV.

The whole brouhaha about the ancestors of Richard Dawkins having been slave-owners collides in the news with this very real present-day story. This to me looks very much like ignoring the elephant in the room. As I’ve written in a previous post, the ancestry of Richard Dawkins is about as irrelevant as the similar one of Sebastian Coe. The institutions pertaining to slavery have, in the West, have long ceased to exist. The results of the collision between what I consider the worst in Western and in African cultures have not. It’s one thing to make genteel fun of a harebrained attempt to discredit Richard Dawkins via his ancestors. It’s another thing to wilfully ignore — and I’m sure the nexus will be ignored — that he stands for precisely the struggle against every form of obscurantism.

The last woman executed — murdered — in the UK for alleged witchcraft was Janet Horne, in 1727. The last women convicted in accordance with the Witchcraft Act of 1735 were sentenced in… 1944! I find the incongruities and continuities striking. Will anyone stand up and tell the yellow journalists who tried to smear Dawkins, “See what’s going on, in the name of belief, faith, religion, under your very eyes? Anything wrong with your picture?”

Won’t happen. The connections won’t be made. The elephant in the room will still be ignored. Now and then a wry cartoon, that’s all.

Again, my apologies if you still feel this posting was wrong. I’m angry, and shrill and loud for being angry.

When the JWs visit I like to pull a smart phone out of my pocket and show them this JW cartoon of Jesus destroying the earth and murdering everyone on the planet. The funniest response I received to this tactic was a supervising JW pastor who explained that “Jesus doesn’t kill everyone.”